Footfalls & Heartbeats

Footfalls & Heartbeats (UK) Limited (FHL) have developed a series of proprietary processes for manufacturing smart knitted fabrics to measure, in real-time, compressive and tensile force. The technology combines mathematically determined textile structures using electrically conductive yarn to form a repeatable and robust sensor network. The technology uses the three-dimensional complexity of a textile structure, including interactions of fibres within the yarn itself, to control the electrical resistance characteristics of the sensor structure. These textile sensor structures are capable of registering external environmental stimuli in the form of electrical signals. Therefore, unlike its competitors’ products, in which solid state sensing systems are embedded within their fabrics, FHL offers a solution whereby “the textile is the sensor”. The signals obtained from the textile can be filtered, amplified, analysed or stored in real-time to produce multiple data sets relating to physiological output. This heralds the emergence of the next generation of smart textiles where sensor functionality is integrated into the fabric structure for real-time monitoring whilst ensuring comfort, personal privacy, wearability and durability. There is an increasing demand in sports, medical and automobile industries for intelligent fabrics to sense and monitor changes in their environments. Applications within each of these fields are diverse and may include, but are not restricted to, wound care, compression garment systems, monitoring of athlete performance and remote monitoring of health and physiological symptoms for those in high risk environments, such as first responders and defence personnel. The FHL knitted textile sensors allows ease of manufacture and allows customisation of design to meet the needs of each commercial partner’s end use.